The present invention relates to voucher payment systems, and more specifically to techniques for providing vouchers to customers.
Vouchers are commonly used to fulfill a variety of obligations. For example, in the travel industry, vouchers are used to compensate customers for certain inconveniences and to maintain customer goodwill. An airline may issue a voucher during an oversold situation to a customer who has been involuntarily denied boarding or who has volunteered to give up a seat. Airlines may also offer vouchers when flights are significantly delayed or cancelled.
Today, vouchers are often issued manually, in handwritten or printed form. Some paper documents have to be retained for audit purposes. When vouchers are used in transactions, merchants must manually enter payment numbers from the vouchers. Voucher processes are very manual and require a lot of time and effort to reconcile.
It would be desirable to provide an alternative method of providing vouchers to customers.